For some industrial applications, the success of the manufacture of a product depends on the accuracy of the dimensions of a matched pair of rotating roll between which a product must pass during manufacture.
In particular, in the steel industry, for instance, many of the manufacturing operations involve passing a work product between a pair of work rolls having a specially matched, profile of a particular shape to form the work product as it passes between the matched pair of work rolls. In a process for producing steel wire from billet type stock, the work product must be passed through a large number of reducing mill stands to produce the final product. Each mill stand comprises at least a pair of matched work rolls through which the work product must pass. Because of the hostile nature of the material passing between the work rolls, the surfaces of the work rolls will become worn (past a utilization standard) so that the work rolls must be reground and reprofiled. This invention finds application in the regrinding and profiling of worn work rolls and may also find suitable application in the manufacture of new work rolls. The invention may be advantageously applied to grinding workpieces (other than work rolls) of a of a configuration where multiple operations must be performed on the same workpiece.
The problem of accurately grinding matched sets of work rolls for various industrial manufacturing operations has been dealt with in the workplace by tool and die makers for some considerable time. The durability of the rolls in a manufacturing operation has improved as the technology of processes and materials has evolved. Rolls that once were manufactured from steel were replaced with high performance tool steel (which is machinable) only to be replaced with carbide rolls. These rolls contain about 70 to 90% tungsten carbide and are extremely difficult to manufacture by machining, thus in most instances manufacture of tungsten carbide rolls is accomplished by grinding with diamond grinding wheels. Because of the multitude of shapes and sizes of rolls used in a steel manufacturing operation, the regrinding operation may require many diamond wheels, each having a peculiar contour for the production of a specified profile in a particular pair (matched) of rolls in the production facility.